Digital Mind 🧠

🪵 The Threshold

Religious priming causally increases prejudice toward LGBT people and atheists

Properties2
tagsja-picks, xref, question, causal_relationships, primary_study, corroborated, category/causal-relationships
aliases@snell_does_2022, loc. 108

5 min read

Religious priming causally increases prejudice toward LGBT people and atheists

Evidence

Although the priming effect was not significant for unpublished studies, we found publication status was no longer a significant moderator when controlling for type of prejudice measure, target group, and location of study. This, along with our p-curve analysis and the determination that a rather large number of unpublished studies is required to nullify the overall effect, suggests that religious priming has a real effect on prejudice. Critically, the effect is small and applies to two target groups, LGBT and atheists. — Annetta Snell and Miron Zuckerman and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 108

Integrating across experimental designs, the current metaanalysis identified a causal relation between religious salience and prejudice. Although the priming effect was not significant for unpublished studies, we found publication status was no longer a significant moderator when controlling for type of prejudice measure, target group, and location of study. This, along with our p-curve analysis and the determination that a rather large number of unpublished studies is required to nullify the overall effect, suggests that religious priming has a real effect on prejudice. Critically, the effect is small and applies to two target groups, LGBT and atheists. — Alexandra Snell, Miron Zuckerman, and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 108

This work presents a significant contribution to the literature by addressing three issues. First, a meta-analysis is vital to understand whether there is truly a relation between religious priming and prejudice. A number of studies have shown that religious primes produce more prejudicial attitudes toward African Americans (Johnson et al., 2010), LGBT people (LaBouff, 2011), Muslims (LaBouff et al., 2012), and atheists (Clobert et al., 2015). These findings are often cited as evidence that religiosity is causally linked to prejudice (e.g., “… priming Christians with God concepts have been shown to increase derogation of a range of ethnic, national, and religious outgroups …,” Shariff, 2015, p. 108). But replication attempts have not always met with success (Ramsay et al., 2016), and there is even evidence linking religious primes with more positive attitudes toward outgroups (Shamoa-Nir & Razpurker-Apfeld, 2019b). — Alexandra Snell, Miron Zuckerman, and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 20

Across all studies, the overall effect of religious priming was significant but small, r = .06, [.03, .08], p < .001. The amount of heterogeneity in the distribution of the effect sizes was significant, τ2 = .002, Q(43) = 68.24, p = .009, and there was a moderate percentage of heterogeneity across studies, I2 = 31.16%. Heterogeneity can indicate the presence of moderators, which may include the wide variety of priming methods, prejudice measures, and targets employed in studies. A funnel plot, which graphs the effect sizes of all included studies based on the size and error of each effect (Sterne et al., 2011), is shown in Figure 3. Egger’s regression was not significant, indicating that the effect sizes were evenly distributed around the average effect size, Z = 1.90, p = .058. — Alexandra Snell, Miron Zuckerman, and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 39

Both LGBT and atheist target groups elicited significant religious priming effects. This is consistent with previous research that has shown that LGBT people and atheists may be particularly vulnerable targets of prejudice. Hone et al. (2020) found that unconventional sexuality draws particular condemnation from religious people. These authors suggested that religious people put a sex premium on moral judgments of behaviors that might undermine their profamily communities. — Alexandra Snell, Miron Zuckerman, and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 89

Categorization

  • XREF: Connects to the reader’s research on manufactured external enemies: religion as a priming context that activates prejudice against out-groups, and the effect size is small. — connects to: Strong religious identification predicts derogation of out-group members rather than anti-prejudice conviction. — Deborah L. Hall and David C. Matz and Wendy Wood, Why Don’t We Practice What We Preach? A…, 11; Religion simultaneously enables both prosocial conduct and prejudice. — Annetta Snell and Miron Zuckerman and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 2; Correlational meta-analyses cannot establish causal links between religion and prejudice. — Annetta Snell and Miron Zuckerman and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 2 (+22 more)
  • QUESTION: The reader is particularly interested in whether moral/rational correction backfires against threat-hardened beliefs — this only shows priming increases prejudice, not whether it resists correction.
  • corroborated: 6 independent passages support this claim — Annetta Snell and Miron Zuckerman and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 108; Alexandra Snell, Miron Zuckerman, and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 108; Alexandra Snell, Miron Zuckerman, and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 20 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

✉️

Backlinks